


A Distinct Lack of Control

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: Alien: Resurrection Fics [3]
Category: Alien Quadrilogy (Movies), Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Lesbian Ellen Ripley, Monstrous Ripley, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags May Change, monstrous lesbian doing monstrous things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:56:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27998625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: Aboard theAuriga, something sleeps. Aboard theBetty, Call plans to save an ungrateful human race.
Relationships: Annalee Call/Ellen Ripley
Series: Alien: Resurrection Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984916
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	A Distinct Lack of Control

**Author's Note:**

> I ran this through Grammarly and literally hit -Correct- on everything so if it's weird that's why  
> Editing is -not- fun.  
> so if there are more errors I'll fix em' later.
> 
> I'll continue this when able.

They were _Us._ The ephemeral _Them._ They were _We. It._ They were _They._ A simple set of pronouns, a pointed glare. A label to fit the _Thing._

_Her._

She was one of those _things._ She wasn’t _Ellen; she_ wasn’t _Ripley;_ she was _Eight; she_ was a _failure; she_ was _broken._

The _subject._ The _experiment._

**_Thing._ **

But inside of her, it didn’t feel that way. Inside it felt like a layer of crushed glass; her soul was riddled with blackened tombs; her mind was a monolith dredged up by the evening tides, revealed only to spark despair. There was a duality to her nature that was near crystalline, ribbed silicate, a funhouse mirror reflecting what little remnant of _Ellen_ remained.

She wasn’t entirely sure she had a soul. _Ellen_ might have had one, one that was good and pure, bright despite the dark vastness of space. Ellen had been religious once, and she knew that. _Thought_ she knew that. _Could_ have known that? Was the memory of a rosary and unrepentant sinners still bound up within her heart, her blood, swirling away inside the _Other?_ That mind was ancestral and matriarchal, a prototype for what she - _they and_ ** _it_ ** \- would become.

She didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. It was just errant thoughts left inside her mind, pulsing rhythms that beat and beat, pounding in her head. What mattered now was that they asked her questions, queried if she were _well,_ and she could answer.

 _“We’re_ fine.” A lie.

 _“We’re_ healthy.” A truth.

We, _we,_ **_we_**.

They seemed to hate that for some reason she couldn’t understand. The plurality of it threw them off; her words shoved them away with distant hatred and anger, a blackened pit. She was a _thing,_ and they wanted labels, wanted answers. Wanted it to be easy. But she _wasn’t_ easy; Ellen hadn’t just been dead, she’d been _reborn._ Sliced up, split open, her breastbone cracked and cracked again, her blood boiling away in the vacuum of space. 

The humans did that to her, _for_ her. They stole away her third child, the last one, the one that she’d borne from her own breast. They’d carved away the little slivers of her humanity until Ellen was gone for good, and she’d remained as a barely working experiment.

She was a toy to break apart, mechanical pieces stretched thin and studied, and if she wanted to refer to herself as plural, _she would._ None of them could stop her, and their odd stares could fuck off. She couldn’t be put back together, and they’d just need to deal with all these broken pieces.

 _“Does it hurt when I touch you here?”_ the doctor asked, his hands in thin, white gloves. His fingers were on her knees, against her chest, probing the hollow beneath her ribs. 

His eyes lingered uncomfortably on her breasts, and she realised that humanity hadn’t changed much in the two hundred or so years she’d left them alone.

She smiled, all sharpened teeth and black fire hidden deep beneath a painting of civility. “ _We_ don’t feel any pain there.”

She _loved_ the way fear curdled their ugly faces.

\---

The days continued to run on despite the looming threat of ventilation towards the aft of the ship. Her calendar was fluttering, dragging on and ripping pages. No more _we,_ no more _us._ They’d made that clear. Her duality was broken.

Whatever she was, was whole.

It didn’t mean their threats had made her whole, or that she was right in the head. It just meant she could no longer keep up the pretence that being two was more than one. She was _alone;_ her mind and body was a mixture, a _hybrid._ She was Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, five-one-five-six-one-seven-zero.

She was the Queen Mother, a regent to a darkened horde she’d never met, a brood with no beginning, no end. She was Ouroborous, and she’d filled her stomach with all she could.

She was a mother to life _and_ death.

She was a beast; a creature practised in destruction and renewal.

She was alone. She was sad. She was crying, more often than not. She was aware of the brokenness to her memories, the way they shattered under scrutiny. The skittering underneath her skull was everpresent, and when she thought too hard, it bit, and scratched. There were moving pictures and spoken lines, a play with parts she couldn’t recall. They were nothing like memories, not really.

They didn’t have that sense of permanence that accurate recollection would contain. It didn’t have the _feeling_ of ripping her chest apart, of waking in a morgue dressed up as operating room. They didn’t have the tenacity to stick or remain coloured. Her mind was walking naked in its cell, and so was she. There was no one around her and nothing to do except wonder - _who, what, where_ \- she was. The memories were fleeting and incomplete. Thinking on them, forcing herself to remember was slowly bringing her to madness. Confusion, hate, more tears.

She was _angry._

She was rage incarnate; she was the Goddess of War given human flesh and alien blood. SHe was acidic, burning, splitting her lip just to watch their skin melt, and slough off into drippy meat. She was scratching with vicious claws until the walls of her cell were burning, sizzling until she’d bored a hole and _screamed._ She wanted the hole to be bigger, large enough for her to hide away within its metal corridors, its endless shafts and maintenance tunnels. Her flight of fancy wouldn’t garner her any form of true escape, and she had the genuine fear that if she managed to accomplish it, she’d die. They would make good on their promises and send her off into the emptiness of space, adrift, forgotten, another failure to write reports on and then forget until the next sorry sod decided to replicate the experiment.

But her restraint had a limit, and she was slowly nearing it. She wasn’t something that they could genuinely control or learn from. She was just herself, whatever she was. She was no one else, and no matter what that couldn’t change. She was the delicate composition of Human and Alien; a _Xenomorph,_ as the scientists kept calling them.

_Specimen._

Ellen was dead.

 _She_ was Ripley.

\---

At night she was something much more than human, something quite ancient, wholly feral.

Her senses were beyond the easy limits of humanity. Those edges had been crossed long ago, and now there was a layering of obfuscation - _a varying intensity_ \- that drowned out what might be labelled as _sight_ or _sound._

She could still see, but the light was harsh, a blocky strip that passed through underdeveloped cells on her misshapen skull. Sound merely exacerbated her differences, left rolling pines of dark and light, grew and sallow, a rolling clatter that bounced off the roof, the floor, the walls and even her own body. The burbling hiss from the bottom of her throat was a source of circular intrusion, a ping that lit up her world in brilliant hues.

She was on top of something stable with her tail dragging down onto the ground, looping over itself and falling where her exoskeleton bunched up. The muscles were light in some places, more decisive in others, and though she could move it, it lay still. Easier that way. Carrying the spiny knives was more demanding than moving her mutated fingers, and her unfurling jaw was easier still.

The absence of prey was a nuisance, but a nuisance that could easily be rectified. She’d drag something back for the hive, for the Queen, for her brethren and their waiting siblings yet to be born. 

Hisses and clicks popped off at random all around her as they turned back towards the hunt. Little echoes scattered off the walls, let her know just where they were, what they had found, and soon enough she could sense the growing madness of a frenzy. She took off towards them with limbs stretched out too long, spittle dripping from her maw and fingers grasping at the nodules that maintained the hive. She was running, sprinting; there was pretty to be had, and she wanted _in._

\---

The stark interior of the ship was more utilitarian than neglect. There were amenities to be found if one was to look hard enough. There were hideaways to explore, recreation to be had. Downtime was covered just as well as work, or other more boring responsibilities. But the ship had never been meant to look pretty, or delightful, and so the drudgery was baked in, stamped on every corner where metal met metal. Unfortunately for the designers, their look worked all too well.

Call was bored of the awkward browns, the slate grey, and the gunmetal steel that seemed neverending. This place was nothing like where she’d grown up, and she detested herself for retreating to those memories when the reality of the present became too much. She wanted to be _away_ from home, from the recollection of _family,_ of being purged.

Alive was better than dead, and this rotting hulk was fast losing blood.

The job that she’d signed up for had been to hijack a sleeper ship, yank out the contents, and then speed away towards a lucrative payoff. That no one else on board the _Betty_ \- _except Hillard and Elgyn, who knew everything and_ **_still_** _went on with it_ \- seemed to know the contents of their haul was a sign that the rest of the crew wouldn’t have been alright with this job. 

Even Christie wasn’t fully aware; Elgyn had woven a rather fanciful little tale about capturing bounties and then returning them to a USM ship for _reintegration._ Calling it as such meant that the crew could happily pretend that their instincts were incorrect, that they weren’t carting anything precious off to death and mayhem. Elgyn had doubts; Call knew the hints, the signs. Hillard didn’t though, and that just made her hate the woman that _little bit_ more. The other crew had _heart,_ Hillard had cold cred.

None of them - _save for Elgyn and Hillard, who were happy to have cred delivered to their flagging accounts (thirteen thousand down the hole now that the_ **_Betty_ **_had been reported as unpaid), the creditors satisfied for another year or so_ \- wanted to be here. Christie wanted to go back to smuggling guns, it was safer that way, and the stakes were always evident. Johner wanted to go bust skulls, and this ship was automated, there was no one here for him to destroy. Vriess just wanted to stay in his little hole near the engine bay and pretend they were doing honourable jobs for a reputable corporation. Call, however, _needed_ to be here. She was aware of what awaited them on the little sleeper vessel, and she knew what came after when they dropped it off. She doubted that the USM would allow them to leave once they’d arrived, they weren’t so kind as that.

But going into the beast’s lair was the only way forward, and Call had no reservations about her duty. 

But she _was_ worried, and so she sat back in her bunk during the final burn towards the _Auriga_ and went over the plan, again.

It was hundredth or so permutation she’d run, and the result hadn’t changed at all. _Failure._ Improvisation was what she needed, all the circuits in her brain leaving her unable to predict a way forward. The exercise was calming despite the monotony. She couldn’t forget the details that were stuck, inflexible and rigid. There _was_ something on that ship, and there _was_ a way to put an end to this before it truly began. She couldn’t lose sight of that purpose, and so she played it through again. 

And _again._

It was a poor semblance of control, but she took it nonetheless.

Once she stepped foot on that ship there were a million little things that could go wrong, possibilities both good and bad, reactions that she’d never once thought of or conceived. The subject might already be dead, a blasted piece of frozen meat somewhere far away. She might not have even been born into fruition, and perhaps these stolen bodies were only meant as a _just-in-case_ sort of scenario. The subject might have already escaped, and they could be dropping down into a death trap. Or it might have been tamed, used, shuttled away back to a planet where the USM could never be found.

There could be innumerable ways for this mission to be doomed to failure, but she was doomed to _try._

If she didn’t suck it up and press on, who would?

_The humans?_

The idiots who were trying to weaponise a plague of epic proportions? The idiots who thought they saw God in every dollar sign? The same pigs who’d built her forefathers, and then murdered them all for the sin of being able to question their role in the world?

 _They_ couldn’t be left to this.

 _They_ didn’t deserve the chance to fix this.

 _She_ did, and she’d succeed, even if they’d hate her for it. She’d drag them all, kicking and screaming, back to the light.


End file.
